New Data on What College Presidents Really Think (about athletics, Obama, more)

Inside Higher Ed is today releasing a national poll of college presidents (more than 1,000 responded, from every sector) and the results may be newsworthy for some of you — especially the results related to college athletics and to the 2012 election.

On athletics, we found that:

–7 in 10 college and university presidents believe that the past year’s sports scandals have damaged all of higher education and that institutions spend way too much on intercollegiate athletics — but barely a quarter say their own campuses are susceptible to such scandals or overspend on sports.

–65.1 percent of college presidents said that they planned to vote for the president this fall. Among sectors, support was stronger in public higher education (75 percent at public doctoral and master’s institutions, 85 percent at public baccalaureate institutions and 66 percent at community colleges). The lowest level of support was in for-profit higher education, where only 29 percent of presidents said they plan to vote for Obama this fall.

–Only 10 percent of all college presidents believed that the Republican candidates have offered a higher education vision, but that figure is inflated by a high proportion of yes answers from for-profit higher education (44 percent). The figures are much lower for the rest of higher education — 4 percent among public doctoral institutions, 3 percent among public master’s institutions, and not a single private doctoral university president agreeing.

I’m happy to help any reports on this.

Best,

Scott

This post originally appeared on EWA’s now-defunct online community, EdMedia Commons. Old content from EMC will appear in the Ed Beat archives.

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Scott Jaschik is the editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. He co-leads the outlet’s editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, resources and interactive features. Jaschik has published articles on colleges in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and Salon. From 1999 to 2003, Jaschik was the editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a graduate of Cornell University.